Tuesday, August 25, 2015

When we have limited time for a quick walk in the woods, Metzenbaum has been our go to park. Tonight was one of those nights. This is a relatively small park of about 65 acres, but it has a nice show of wildflowers through the spring and summer.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

The thing about spring is it is a great time to pause and enjoy the re-start of life while for a few moments forgetting the calendar has moved one digit closer to our last call. It's a perfect time to dust off the music of youth, take off the jackets and go look for spring flowers. I try to find as many flowers and birds as possible each spring while listening for spring peepers whenever possible. Every year I eagerly await the arrival of long days and late sunsets. Today we found a lot of caches, but more importantly, saw great sights of spring. It was a wonderful day.

Many of the painted trilliums were still opening.

We still need to teach Lizzie to drink when on the trail. It will be more important as the spring turns to summer. Fortunately, Phineas know what to do with a bowl of water.

Lizzie was with us for her 150th cache today. It's hard to believe she's been with us less than six months.

In spring there's often a good reason to check mud puddles as well as vernal pools for eggs and tadpoles.

I was caching my way to an overnight stay in Wytheville,Virginia. I stopped for my first cache along the South Yadkin River. It was a great choice since the boat launch was near a train line with a really impressive wooden trestle bridge.

It was truly impressive. I really wanted to go under for more images, but it was clearly marked no trespassing so I was content to admire it from behind the signs.
The South Yadkin is muddy and my brain constantly plays music so I was visited by the earworm for Ode to Billie Joe.

Ode to Billie Joe.... Bobbie Gentry

And then she said, "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

And me - I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

The trestle bridge and the muddy South Yadkin seemed an appropriate place for this earworm. I remember my brother had the 45 when I was really young.
With a couple of not so memorable stops in between, I made my way to a cemetery where the parents of Daniel Boone are buried. Besides the Boones, there is a wealth of history at the small, old cemetery.
Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

North Carolina is one of my least favorite places to cache. The state parks don't permit geocaching and much of the other offerings lean to extensive micros. I hoped this evening would be different. In exchange for 25 miles of driving each way, I was hoping to be rewarded with eight small-sized geocaches and a 4-mile round=trip hike. The evening didn't start well.

The first coordinates took me twenty to thirty feet past a no trespassing sign. I respect private property so I looked extensively around the sign and finally gave up on this hide.

I found the second hide and was quite surprised to see a micro. Oh well, on to the third.

I made a try for the third cache with no find. I had spent so much time on two dnf's and with the expectation of more long hunts, I gave up for the evening and turned back.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

We started our day with a walk at our home to look for spring wildflowers. The woods were filled with a number of flowers. On our return home the first snake of spring was a small garter snake on the deck.

Our afternoon was spent in Clear Creek and the surrounding areas. We were hunting a few of the DCNR's CCC geotrail and looking for some geocaches that would give us time in the woods.
At Clear Creek State Park Lizzie was in fine form high stepping on the trail.

Our first find was a cache called Weasel's Neverending Hill. It was a good uphill, but not a major hike.

The hide was in a nice rock pile at the edge of a large stand of rhododendrons. It was too early for them to be blooming, but the area must be attractive during June.

Lizzie had really muddy feet from the climb to the cache.

We picked a more scenic (and drier) way back.

We had to make a return visit to a cache at the original site of the training center for game officers. I whined on the way out about the lack of wildflowers. It turned out I wasn't looking closely enough. The nice assortment included many, many painted trilliums.